9.To dispatch a predator

Dwax left Dong Jun to her devices afterward. She needed to rest.

Dwax remembered all the bastards who wronged him. They ruined his life in a manner that put him in a box called "prey," humiliating him, starving him, and pushing him aside, like doing so was just a fact of life. He watched the lion pace back and forth. It knew there was prey in the building. Dwax's face contorted with a deep, seething grudge against the lion. The lion was all the people who refrained from employing him due to his resistance to forced gene edits. The lion was the person who nonchalantly flung the bioweapon at this world's populace. The lion was the man who tried to kill him for a measly piece of rat meat.

With gusto, he snapped the iron curtain holders off the wall. Then he went to the staircase to break them in half, using the staircase's guardrails as leverage. He made six javelins in total.

Outside, rain had started.

Seeing a fresh meat sack walk out of the front door, the lion felt like it was its lucky day. It started running toward Dwax. A sharp pain assaulted it between its foreleg and its neck. The lion yelped in fear. It might've gotten at the prey if it had pushed through the pain and attacked. Unfortunately for the lion, it tried to escape in fear. It roared, attempting to scare its enemy. The person who was stalking it with sticks was relentless.

Something within the lion stirred. It was an ancient instinct. A fear. Dwax's image got superimposed with an image of an African man stalking lions with his spear. The lion's mind was filled with a terrible sense of danger.

The lion turned around. It understood it had nowhere to run. Dwax was able to stalk it wherever it went. It had lost too much blood. The lion tried to make a desperate swipe at him. Dwax's eyes caught the movement. Dwax crouched away from the swipe and pushed another javelin into the lion's flesh. The iron rod went through the lion's neck and came out of its skull behind its ear.

As the light was extinguished from its eyes, there was nothing in its thinking that saw Dwax as prey. Dwax was a predator over it. He felt God watching over him. The god had given Dwax his blessing through blood. The god gave his blessings through ash, blood, or ink.

Dwax pushed another javelin through the lion's eye to make sure it was dead. He picked up a bit of blood and smeared it into his gene-harvesting organ. The edited bits of the lion's DNA were unavailable to Dwax. It was protected by genetic encryption and didn't show up in the hallucinatory gland projection. All Dwax got were classic lion genes.

A predator's flesh is full of toxins, and it tastes bad. He didn't harvest its meat to eat. He wasn't desperate for food anymore. There was no reason to fill his body with toxins. He returned to the plaza, covered in blood.

Kahara yelled at him.

"What did you do?"

She heard the lion's pained yelps. She has been looking for Dwax throughout the plaza for something else. She ran to the window and saw Dwax attacking the lion with javelins. She felt indignant. What the fuck was he doing? Dong Jun said the lion was about to die. Was there any point in taking such a risk?

After she saw the lion die, she bolted outside to grill him about the stupid shit he just pulled.

"Hey, you bastard! What the fuck are you doing? What possessed you to attack a monster ten times your size?"

Dwax showed no sign of remorse. He did what he did. He wasn't about to second guess himself after the fact.

"Aren't you tired of feeling like a bitch? That fucking beast was waiting for us to fuck us up. I walked out and put it in its place. I know it's stupid to go out and poke a lion in the face, but sometimes a man has to do what he has to do."

Kahara stomped away. She knew she couldn't do anything when a man started behaving like this. She decided to talk to Warrow about this. He said:

" Yes, it's stupid, but it's understandable. Dwax is a hot-blooded young man. There is only so much humiliation he could take. This was bound to happen sooner or later. I'm just glad he's not injured. Did you expect him to cower in fear all his life?"

Warrow remembered the time he decided to put up a fight against a bully. Back then, every time he went to school, he was full of fear. A kid named George had been terribly tormenting him. The things George pulled on him were borderline psychotic. Of course, there were more logical ways to try and deal with this. But none of them solved the problem completely. Snitching his bully to the teachers didn't wash away the humiliation. So Warrow decided to pinch a knife and stab George with it. Since he was pinching the knife, it didn't go too far into Georgia. That way, the police would have no justification to get involved. Warrow stabbed George whenever he caught him alone. The tormentor had become the tormented.

Warrow's explanation, although helping her understand, made her worry far more. She thought Dwax and Warrow would take unnecessary risks because of the twisted logic they had surrendered themselves to. She was becoming quite the worrywart.

In the meantime, Dwax visited Dong Jun.

" Hey, Jun, How are you feeling?"

Jun pulled her curtains to the side.

" Oh, you know, same old, same old. I just have a bit of a fever. "

Dwax smiled.

" I have some lion genes for you."

Jun was taken aback.

" Oh sh*t. It is dead. Did it have a heat stroke?"

Dwax leaned on the counter and raised his brow.

" I killed it with javelins."

Jun was confused.

" Why didn't you use the prism on top of the building to concentrate light on it? Your job would have been far easier."

He rolled his eyes. This was why talking to smart people was hard.

" I'm not as smart as you, OK? When I want to solve a lion problem, I use dumb pointy sticks. Do you want lion genes or not?"

Jun chuckled.

" Put it in a box over there."

Then she paused, seemingly thinking about something.

" Do you plan to put some lion traits on yourself?"

Dwax nodded.

" Do you have anything to recommend? I want to have its eyes. Bug eyes are fine and all, but I can't see too far."

Jun nodded.

" Let me tweak the genes a bit for you. When it comes to lion eyes, it's best to upgrade the color recognition to human standards. That way, you can get some night vision without sacrificing your color recognition."

Dwax was satisfied. There was no semblance left from the condescendence he had felt from her voice.

"I'll leave it to you."

Dwax was sticky with blood and needed a good shower.

Three hours later, Warrow was sitting in the wheelchair in the living room, watching movies on TV. Dwax was taking a shower in the next room. Kahara walked in and asked.

Where is Dwax?"

After hearing the answer, she walked directly into the bath and closed the door behind her. When Warrow shook the momentary surprise, he smiled.

"Ah, to be young again."

The following weeks were spent scouring the city for supplies. The three of them had fallen into a routine. That all went to shit when, all of a sudden, the plaza started giving out alarms.

"What's happening, Dong Jun? What is this alarm?"

She pulled out her phone and said,

"The algae room is building up pressure. We didn't excrete enough to feed the algae. Normally, the adjacent rotting compartment would handle all the rotting algae. It's geared to handle all the methane buildup automatically. Unfortunately, the actual algae compartment doesn't have those automatic failsaves."

She searched for something else on her phone and said,

"Open valve four in the basement. That would open a channel between the algae room and the rotting room, effectively turning them into a single room. The rotting room failsaves will do the rest."

She paused for a second.

"We need to leave the city as soon as possible and avoid buildings with crystals on top of them as much as possible. If this is happening here, it's happening at every building that uses algae energy. That means we are walking over ticking timebombs within the city."

She finally stepped out of her room.

"My metamorphosis is complete. I will not be edited to death or die of cancer. I owe you guys a lot."

She took a data bank and put it in the bag.

"I have everything I need here. Oh, by the way, your lion eyes are ready. If we find a safe pod, you can have your eyes."